RAINBOW
by SneezySoul
Summary: Mood rings can tell a mood better than most people. (Drabbles, short stories.)
1. Jack - BLACK

**RAINBOW**

 **-Colors are taken from mood ring description(s) I find. May not be accurate.**

-o-

 **JACK**

 **BLACK; Intense, stressed.**

-o-

The blow couldn't have hit him harder; it came out of nowhere. He watched it and felt as if all time had stilled once the arrow met it's target, the golden sand splaying out as if it were a liquid, quickly turning black against the nightmares that sped around them.

Jack wasn't sure what to think when the little man, the little brave man made of sand and dreams, had slowly turned to face his attacker, defiant and, in the end, as brave as he'd ever been.

It was admirable.

The way he'd fell from the sky, his body of sand splashing down to the earth in a golden goodbye. His last little glow upon the world, before it was snuffed out, the gold turning a sickly charcoal before his eyes.

He was angry - more than angry - and with a cry that seemed to shake the very wind around them, he lunged forward, the man before him bringing up a quick wave of nightmares and curses, surprise running across his features at the sudden change.

He froze them all.

He was sure it was quite a sight; frozen nightmares falling from the sky like hail, smashing onto the ground as if they were nothing more than that.

It was a promise, really. A big promise for him to make, he'd idly thought as he fell.

An ice-cold promise, the kind of promise you'd only see in movies and old history long-before past:

A promise of revenge.


	2. Bunny - WHITE

**BUNNYMUND**

 **WHITE: Hollow, blank, void.**

 **-o-**

He wasn't sure when he'd become so unattached to his job. It was just a thing that happened over time.

The children still loved looking for his eggs, and quite a few adults enjoyed it as well, but for him it started to feel so...bland.

Sanderson said that he might be a little depressed, after he'd explained himself to the man. He didn't deny it, but he also couldn't see himself that way; it was more or less like his motivation just flew right out the window.

He asked the little man to keep it to himself - just until Bunnymund could find a solution, or get over it, anyway. Or, if in an emergency, like if he suddenly stopped working altogether, the man could then tell everyone he wanted to. (But that was just as a last resort, really. Bunny could never not continue Easter; it was one of the few important holidays.)

He made sure no one else could find out about this, but he was sure that somehow, someway, Jack must have gotten word of it. Maybe it was just some weird inner-spirit thing, or a sixth sense the boy had, but he's been finding the child coming and going to his burrow unannounced for too many times to count. By this point, he just told his stone guardians to let the boy enter and exit as he pleased.

It was strange; Jack would come whenever he started to feel...bored? Tired? He wasn't sure what to make of it, but Jack seemed to just _know_ about it, and would always - _always_ \- show up causing some mischief, or just sitting around until the elder found him, like some tiny game of hide-n-seek Jack and he would play unknowingly.

It made him wonder sometimes. Why was it that he couldn't just sit and think about bland things or why he was feeling this way without Jack Frost one step behind him? Why was this boy even here, after all Bunny had said to him? All the crud, all the banter?

He didn't think last time the boy entered his burrow, only concentrating on the little egg he'd been trying to paint - trying and failing, if you had asked him at the time, 'piss off' he'd said gruffly, ignoring the hurt expression the other held at that. 'I don't need you.'

He was sure that Jack hated him. He was so, so sure that Jack would fly as far, far away as he could and stay away.

Guilt ate at him that night, and he found that sleeping felt pointless.

He stayed up all throughout the night, wondering if Easter was even worth it this year. The once-colorful eggs looked bland, the colorful burrow of his seemed to turn a gray color, and he wasn't sure he even wanted to look at it in the morning. The off-color was slowly getting to him.

He wasn't sure when he fell asleep.

But when he woke up it was to cold fingers threading through his fur.

He wasn't sure when he'd turned to hug the child close to his chest, and he also wasn't entirely sure when he'd started crying, muttering apologies over and over, but Jack took it all in stride.

'We all go through this.' the boy says when he later asks. 'The empty feeling.'

Bunny had no idea what to call the feeling, but the way Jack had put it seemed to ring in his ears.

He found that, even with such a feeling, it seemed to get better with the boy around.

He just hadn't realized that it might have been because he was lonely. Jack would know lonely, wouldn't he?

It didn't get better on his own, and he liked to pretend that Jack dragging over the other guardians to the burrow was entirely unwanted, but...

It made him feel better.


	3. Bunny,North - RED

**Bunny, North**

 **+others mentioned/barely there: Pitch, Jack**

 **RED; Rage, anger, (fierce).**

 **-o-**

" _Is that...Jack frost?" A shadow flickers behind them, Pitch stands behind the guardians, hands idly behind his back as if he didn't have the world's most well-known spirits standing there, weapons pointed at him, "I didn't know you were all so chummy."_

" _We're not." Jack replies._

" _Oh, good," Pitch says, "a neutral party. I'll ignore you for now," he then sends the boy a grin, "but you must be used to that."_

Bunny wouldn't admit it out loud, but he still felt angry every time his mind replayed the memory; it was only a month ago, but the look that crossed Jack's face at the time kept flashing in his mind. The same face he made when Bunny had screamed at him. The same face he'd made when he thought the guardians didn't want him, that nobody wanted him.

It made his insides churn, his heart race. It made his mind flicker to thoughts of chocolate, of ripping a certain shadow apart with nothing but claws and teeth.

A loud crack sounds out from his hand, snapping him back to reality. He'd cracked yet another brush. Great.

North eyes him for a moment from his place by the table - the guardians made it a thing to show up at eachother's homes every night or so to have dinner and talk. North had made a good point when he mentioned the idea.

One of those points being in that Jack didn't have a home, and maybe he'll feel comfortable enough after a time to ask to stay at theirs.

This just makes Bunny even more angry.

He shouldn't be angry, he really, really shouldn't, but he couldn't help it.

Jack was a child. Jack had been alone for three hundred years or so - that was probably during the time they all fought Pitch on the moon. Why the man in the moon didn't get him then was no excuse for leaving a child alone.

Even if Jack was a spirit, and a powerful one to boot, he was still little, and he was still...

Still easily _broken_.

Jack had a soft heart, believe it or not, and, even now, after all these years without them, Bunny still remembered how his species, the pooka, would die from something like that.

Their hearts would stop if they were too sad, too tired, too _done_. It almost happened out of nowhere, but thankfully it was easily prevented.

Humans didn't die easily from heartbreak - they could, sure - but Bunny didn't need anyone to tell him that, even if you didn't die from it, it still felt like you were _dying_.

He'd had plenty of experience. Being a spirit meant you didn't pass on so easily from things like that.

He'd been alone for so, so long...

To imagine Jack pushing through every day like that for most of his life?

 _Every single day_?

It made him angry.

"What is on your mind, friend?" North asks, thrumming his fingers against the table softly.

Bunny reaches in his bandolier for another brush, replacing the one he'd broken, "stuff."

The man smiles, "what kind of stuff would cause you to break a brush? - Must be some very big stuff."

"It's about Jack," Bunny answers.

"Ah," North leans back, crossing his arms, "if he caused trouble, perhaps we can speak to him when he comes, yes?"

It takes Bunny a second of momentary anger to remember why North would think such a thing - it seemed almost every day since Jack became a guardian he and Bunny were at each other's throats, bickering back and forth and often fighting about little things here and there.

This...it doesn't help him being angry - if anything, that anger turned to himself. He was angry at himself. Why couldn't he just calmly approach the child? - Why did he always feel so...so defensive around the winter spirit?

"Nah, mate," he shakes his head, setting the extra brush gently down on the napkin in front of him.

"he did nothing wrong."


	4. Tooth,North - BROWN

**TOOTH, NORTH**

 **BROWN; troubled, restless.**

 **-o-**

No matter how much she tossed and turned, she just couldn't get to sleep.

This part of the palace was secluded and sound-proofed enough that the faint chattering of her daughters could only be heard if you were to listen very, very carefully.

A cup of tea and a few slices of her favorite bread didn't help her get to sleep either.

Sure, she had so much energy all the time, fluttering this way and that, but usually it didn't take this long to sleep. It usually only took about thirty minutes or so, but she was positive that it'd been about three or four hours.

It wasn't too hot, the windows were all open, letting in a slight breeze. There was little to no noise keeping her awake, either.

And her bed was fluffy and covered in downy feathers, just the way she liked it.

So what was keeping her _awake_? Why couldn't she sleep? _Why_?

Frustrated, she flutters around in quick circles, trying her best to wear herself out, moving her wings as fast as they could go, hoping that this spare energy would just _go away_.

The sound of the door creaking open made her stop in place.

North offers a sheepish smile, "I didn't interrupt anything, did I?"

"No." she says, going to stand, letting her wings rest. "Why are you here?"

The man enters the room as careful as he could; the room was a tad bit smaller than what he was used to. It wasn't that the ceiling was too low, or the room to _small,_ but it was due to the various cushions laying about the floor.

Her room was just a room with a giant nest-like batch of pillows, feathers, soft blankets, and silk sheets all piled onto the floor; the 'bed' just the way she liked it.

It was oddly adorable how the man would carefully push a feather, or a pillow aside before stepping, almost like he was afraid he'd ruin something fragile.

She smiles at the way he shuffled further into the room slowly, "It's okay if you step on some feathers, you know."

The man blinks owlishly at her for a moment, "But it's your bed, yes? - I'd hate if someone stepped on my bed."

"Well," she says, "your bed is made a certain way; mine's just all over the room."

Changing the topic, North shakes his head, before lifting the bag he held, "You daughters said you couldn't sleep?"

She arches an eyebrow at him, "Yes?" she's not sure how her daughters found out about it, but that was a question she'd ask them later.

"I've just the thing!" the man smiles, lifting the bag up once more, wiggling it side to side.

She walks closer, inspecting the bag he held with curiosity, "What is it?" she asks.

"When I can't sleep" - the man hands the bag to her to rummage through - "I like to watch movies."

"Movies?"

"Books, but moving." the man explains as she pulls out a tiny machine, "Not sure how to describe them. You'll have to see."

She takes a seat on one of the larger cushions, pressing buttons on the little machine, "What kind of books?"

"Good ones," he answers, flopping down on the pillow next to her, "I heard you liked that book Jack got you, yes? - The one with stars?"

"The fault in our stars?" she says in almost a gasp, "There's a moving book for it?"

"Movie," North corrects, grinning ear-to-ear, "but yes! It's good, I think?"

"How do I turn it on?" she asks hurriedly.

"The side; red button."


	5. Pitch,Jack - ICE BLUE

**PITCH, JACK**

 **ICE BLUE: fear, scared, panic.**

 **TW: Stockholm syndrome.**

 **-o-**

He won, and with an almost sadistic glee he took as much of it in as he could; the dark, the screams, the cries of children lost, alone. The fearful gazes of everyone as he sat above them all in a throne made of nightmares and fear.

It felt all too amazing, all wonderful to him. The taste of fear was one he had longed for, for many, many years now.

They brought him things and tried to placate him, but no matter what they did, all he'd ever wanted was to be feared. Petty things and objects held little to no meaning to him.

He'd left the man in the moon alone, though, just so he can cast a victorious smirk at the man, knowing he was being watched.

The guardians put up a pitiful fight, he'd say, when in fact they fought as fierce as a cornered animal, really.

He kept some of them in cages down below, just so he can forever preserve the wonderful, tantalizing fear they all had adopted over the years.

One thing made him...afraid, though.

He wasn't sure if it was fear he himself felt or another emotion, nor would he ever try to figure it out.

But Jack Frost stilled smiled.

At him.

The spirit, the _child_ would crack jokes and laugh at him from the little cramped cage he sat in. No matter how much Pitch would try to bring up the child's fears, the spirit would come back from them just as quick as before, tossing one joke after another, laughing at him, laughing at everything.

He didn't even have his staff, or his snow, anymore; his power was gone, gone _gone,_ yet the boy still sat and _laughed_ at him as if he were a joke.

"My way of coping," he'd said, grinning from behind the dark bars separating them. "Not that you'd know, would you?"

The thing about the spirit that had Pitch reeling back and hiding into his shadows was the way the boy seemed to _know_ him.

The child would comment on the way Pitch would talk, walk, sound. He seemed to dig right underneath the man's skin, opening up his mind and flittering about, despite being stuck in a cramped cage.

It was unsettling.

It was one thing he was afraid of.

"Dark, long, and moody?" Jack said one day when he entered the cavern he'd left the boy in. "Yes, yes, and _yes_. Wow, you really took the cake, right?"

"Shut up!" Pitch had snarled.

"Nah, I like annoying you; you make the best faces."

"Silence, at once!"

"Uhm, no? - You look like a puffer fish right now!"

Pitch was taken aback once more at the boy's stubbornness. He drew his cloak around himself, hoping to separate himself even more from the caged child, "Why?" he asked.

"Your hair's spikier than normal, and you puff your cheeks out when you're angry, duh." The boy answered, wiping a tattered sleeve across his cheek, knocking leftover nightmare sand from his face.

"No," Pitch sneered, "why aren't you _afraid_? What can I do to make you afraid? - Every guardian but you had succumbed to fear! Why not you?"

Jack had shrugged. "I don't know; maybe you're just old news? - Get yourself a haircut, maybe. That _might_ help."

Pitch remembers storming out of the cavern after that, his pride wounded enough to cause him to drown the northern part of the world in darkness; the feeling of power made him feel better.

 **-o-**

The child took to humming out silly tunes and telling him silly jokes when he thought Pitch wasn't paying attention to him; the boogeyman had made the cavern his main home of sorts, so this became a daily thing for the man.

He loved the fear of the world a lot, yes, but something within him always made him come back to the cavern, just to listen to the brave child rattle on and on about one subject or another. It intrigued him, he admits.

"Knock, knock," the boy grins.

Pitch rolls his eyes, "Why can't you just be _quiet_?"

"You're supposed to say ' _who's there_ '."

The boogeyman frowns, taking a glance at his own globe - it was reminiscent of the one the guardians had in the north pole, but his was a nice dark color, rusted from age and - in his opinion - a lot more classier than the ball of paper they had. "Who's there?" he sighs out.

"Little old lady." Jack replies.

The man, who had been sitting in an old chair, takes a glance at the book in his lap - 'how to instill fear in others', a book that didn't help him with this child at all. He'll most likely throw it away later, "little old lady who?"

Jack giggles. "I didn't know you could yodel!"

It takes the man a minute or two of staring at the child, who'd begun laughing, but once he did get the joke, he very nearly slams his head down onto the book - why, oh why did this child love humiliating him?

 **-o-**

"Why are you not afraid of me?" Pitch asks once more, after Jack had calmed down.

"You're just not scary." the boy had said, "Maybe change the robe into something else? - Like, oh! Maybe you can dress as a vampire! - They're supposed to be scary, right?"

The man stands up, his robe fluttering as he turns sharply, and stalks out of the room, his pride wounded once more.

 **-o-**

A few weeks later he comes back, and stands idly in the corner as the boy in the cage kicks lazily at the bars from where he lay - the cage was small, shaped much like a bird cage, so the child looked cramped.

He'd feel sorry if he didn't enjoy tormenting the child.

He jumps when the boy looks at him, "What's red and bad for your teeth?" the child asks.

"If this is another joke..." Pitch warns.

"It's a good one, I think." Jack promises, struggling for a moment to flip himself around to lie on his stomach. He rests his chin on folded arms, feet moving back and forth in the air, "Where'd you go? You were gone forever!" he says.

Pitch frowns at the question, "Why would you wish to know?"

"It's boring here." the child answers, "Tell me about outside - tell me about anything."

The man is quiet for a moment, taking in the request; looking around, it did seem boring in here, especially if you had no way to do anything as simple as read a book.

He shakes his head, he shouldn't feel as bad as he does, now, but he, sadly, does. The child probably sang the same songs to himself for entertainment, or tried to rock his cage around.

The thought did something to his chest that scared him; it felt tight, as if something were squeezing his lungs.

He chooses to ignore it, "Is it a turnip?" he asks, going to sit down in his chair once more, pulling a new book out of the shadows.

"No."

The man opens the book, skimming over the first page, "Red velvet cake?"

"Nope."

"What, then?"

The child grins from his cage, "A brick."

 **-o-**

Pitch snorts involuntarily at that, disappearing in a cloud of shadow sand before laughing to himself.

If he looks a bit disheveled when he comes back, Jack doesn't ask, merely smiling from his cage and humming a lighthearted tune.

 **-o-**

"Why are you not afraid of me?" Pitch asks as soon as he enters the cavern the next day, robe billowing behind him as he makes his way in front of the cage.

"Why are _you_ not afraid of you?" Jack shoots back.

"Because _I_ am the embodiment of fear itself." Pitch sneers.

Jack is quiet for a few moments, idly picking some dark sand from the bars of his cage, "Well, aren't you just a special little princess?" he then mocks, rolling his eyes.

" _What_?" Pitch growls.

"You're just not _scary_ ; you don't scare me at all."

Pitch seethes in anger, "What scares you, then?" he asks venomously.

Jack looks up, hand to his chin in thought, before glancing back to the man, "You know what scares me? - Gummy bears. They're so scary, with all their colors and squishiness."

Pitch quickly storms out, then, nightmare sand flying him faster than he's ever flown before, looking for these ' _gummy bears_ '. Maybe then - _then_ \- Jack would finally be afraid.

 **-o-**

"Wow, you actually brought me a pack?" Jack asks from his cage, digging into the bag and chewing on the treat as if starved, "How nice of you! Thanks!"

Pitch was pretty sure he'd regret it, but he destroyed the chair in his anger anyway.

(Jack seemed to not pay attention to him, instead seeing how many gummy bears he could shove in his mouth. Pitch left shortly after, to look for a new chair.)

 **-o-**

After tormenting a few adults with nightmare after nightmare, they finally relinquished very common fears children could have.

Yes, he was the embodiment of fear itself, but he didn't exactly know a lot about causing fear other than the normal fears.

What the adults told him...those were some deep, dark fears that he wasn't too sure about, but wanted to try them all the same.

He wanted to feel Jack's fear.

The first fear was up; tearing apart a loved one.

He didn't have anyone Jack loved - well, he did have the pooka, but the pooka was so far gone that even bringing him out of the hole he'd left him in wouldn't help. Jack wouldn't recognize the pitiful thing, he was sure.

So shadowy figure of the tooth fairy? Might as well.

He rips a shadowy arm off of her, making the nightmare shriek. He cackles at that, glancing to Jack to see the child's reaction.

Jack's head was tilted to the side, eyebrows furrowed.

"Well, Jack?" Pitch sneers, "Going to try and save your precious fairy?"

The boy looks to him, "She's dead." he replies monotonously, "She died."

Pitch is taken aback; He really didn't remember it until now, but Jack was certainly there when he'd struck the fairy down.

It was so long ago, he hadn't bothered to really remember fine details like that.

The nightmare forms into the ground at his command.

Just as he stomps out of the cavern once more, Jack's voice drones at his retreating form, "Nice try, though."

His chest felt tight again at the quiet sob the boy let out shortly after that, choosing to hide in the shadows, figuring out his next plan.

Sadness was not fear, and he found himself hating the sound of Jack crying.

 **-o-**

The next time he came back to the cavern was shortly after covering an entire side of the world in a heavy sprinkling of nightmare sand.

He felt tired.

Collapsing in the new chair he'd taken, he allows himself to sink into the cushions; Jack had told him a cushioned, high-back chair was nice, and, surprisingly, he found himself grabbing one.

The child was fast asleep, nightmare sand above his head swirling around, showing little to no images of what his nightmares held.

It was an oddly peaceful sight.

It felt like he'd done this before.

Not in the sense he'd done _this_ before, but in the sense that, at one time, he might have sat, tiredly, in a comfortable chair near a child who'd slept on peacefully.

His lungs feel strange once more, and he lightly smacks his chest to try to knock himself out of it. He hated the tight feeling at this point; it was unnatural.

"Don't hit yourself." Jack says sleepily, blinking slowly at him from the cage.

Pitch sighs, "Go to sleep, Jack."

The child's lips tilt up in a smile, before curling himself into a ball - the only way he could lay on his side in the cramped cage - and doing just that, "Night." he murmurs.

Perhaps that ugly feeling in his chest was the cause, or maybe it was the serenity of the moment, but Pitch finds himself whispering a goodnight back.

It takes him a few minutes to notice he was crying.

Afraid of what he felt, he flees the cavern once more.

 **-o-**

"Do you miss the guardians?" he finds himself asking Jack after flipping through yet another useless book.

Jack shrugs, "Yeah. Don't you?"

The man smirks "I miss gutting them alive." he says lowly, as dark and as scary as he could.

The boy rolls his eyes, "Sure. But you miss them." he points out.

"In a way."

Jack sits back at that, playing with his hands as if disinterested.

"Well?" Pitch asks, arching an impatient eyebrow at the boy. Jack looked like he had wanted to reply to that.

The boy glances up from his hands, "I just miss them." he shrugs, biting his lip and closing his eyes.

"Why?" Pitch scoffs, "They never knew you even existed until they absolutely needed you; they even cast you away!"

" _You_ never knew I existed, either." Jack points out, "You didn't _need_ me, but you didn't take the time to _know_ me, either."

Pitch rolls his eyes, grabbing out another book from the shadows to skim through, "Alright then; tell me about yourself."

Jack is quiet for a moment, "No."

"No?"

"You have to earn knowing me." Jack says quietly, "The guardians knew me a little because they _earned_ it. You haven't earned much, and I don't think you will."

The man glances up at the child, "Perhaps not," he says slowly, his chest feeling yet again tight, "but you're going to be here for a long time."

"Learn to crack a smile and grab a sense of humor and maybe I will." Jack says, "It's kind of hard to look at you otherwise."

Pitch blinks up at the spirit, "Hard to look at me?" he asks.

Jack rolls his eyes, crosses his arms, and turns his back to the man. It was such a dumb, childish move; one that no one in their right mind would do to the boogeyman for fear of being hurt.

The man lets it go, though. Jack was Jack, and if anything, the boy was far too stubborn to listen to him, let alone fear him.

 **-o-**

"Do you have anymore gummy bears?" Jack asks the next day shortly after waking up.

"No." Pitch replies, flipping a page.

A few beats of silence pass between them, "I'm hungry." Jack whines, leaning against the bars with a huff.

"You're a spirit," - another flip of a page - "you do not require food."

"Says you!" Jack says, curling around himself, "I'm hungry."

"You've been in here for a year without food, Jack." Pitch says, "I'm sure you can handle not eating."

Pitch waits a few minutes for the boy to reply, before the sound of a stomach growling can be heard.

"Maybe I'm just hungry?" Jack retorts sharply, obviously angry.

"Maybe I don't care?"

Jack rolls onto his stomach, "What if I said I was afraid of food?"

Pitch snorts, "You'd be lying, of course."

A few more pages are flipped through, before Jack whines once more, "Please?"

The man continues to ignore the boy, but another loud growl from the child's stomach had him pause his reading, "What do you want to eat?" he sighs, dog-earing the page he was on before slamming the book closed.

Jack quickly sits up, "...really?"

"Yes, really." Pitch says, standing up.

"Can I get...a hamburger?"

The man rolls his eyes once more at the boy, "Why not something that _isn't_ disgusting?"

Jack pouts, "Please?"

 **-o-**

In the end, Jack got what he wanted.

Pitch makes sure to leave before the boy asks him for something else.

 **-o-**

"How can you still be sane, after all this time?" Pitch asks, petting the nightmare to his right as he looked up at the globe; looking at the child had become harder and harder each day. It made him feel angry, tired, and, most of all, afraid.

He was battling with himself for a reason he couldn't properly form into words.

A clang from the cage - most likely the boy trying to get it to swing on it's chain - sounds out, "who says I'm sane?" the boy asks.

Pitch turns around to glance at the child - and, yes, he was trying to swing the cage. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the chain was too rusted to really swing. Thankfully it didn't creak or Pitch might get someone to pour oil on it, since Jack insisted on trying to play with it.

"Are you not?" Pitch says, "you've been here for close to two years now, surely there is some secret you have. I haven't visited this lair in four months."

The boy shrugs, "I was alone for longer before you came along. Not having any freedom aside, this isn't much different."

The way he nonchalantly says this makes Pitch frown, "I thought your biggest fear was to be alone?" he steps closer to the cage.

"It is." Jack answers.

The man arches an eyebrow, "I didn't feel your fear."

Jack blows a short raspberry, "because I knew you'd come back."

 **-o-**

The tight feeling in his chest stays with him when he leaves, and even the begging, sobbing of the world as he drenched it in darkness didn't make the feeling leave.

He isn't sure what he wants anymore, after realizing this.

It wasn't normal.

He was afraid.

 **-o-**

A week later he comes back to the cave, walking in this time without shadows, and taking the long tunnels to his destination.

In his left hand he held a bag full of apples, and in his right some books.

"What?" Jack asks, bemused, as a tendril of nightmare sand gently hands the items to him.

Pitch doesn't answer, and instead turns on his heel and makes his way to his chair, flopping down in it with an exhaustion he didn't think he'd ever feel again after taking over the world.

"What?" Jack repeats.

"Shut up." Pitch replies, trying to sound bored.

In all truth, he suspected that the ugly feeling in his chest was linked to Jack in some strange way, or that he was dying. Dying is usually ruled out, though, since you can't kill fear, but he had been wrong before, he admits.

Did Jack feel this way sometimes? Was Pitch really dying?

"Why does a chest feel tight?" Pitch asks, picking up a book that was laid face-down on the arm of the chair from the last time he'd visited.

"Uhm?" Jack hums in question, still chewing on the apple he'd just bitten into.

"There's a book I'm reading," - Pitch lies - "and one of the character's chest feels tight. I've read this before, but I don't understand."

He waits until Jack has time to swallow the bite he'd taken, "I thought you were super literate or whatever?"

"I am," Pitch scoffs, "but I'm just getting into the newer books."

Jack hums in thought, licking the bitten apple before he replies, "you should read harry potter. I heard it was good."

Pitch rolls his eyes - for what feels like the thousandth time, in his having Jack caged. "Perhaps. Answer my question."

"It usually means things like anxiety, worry, and other stuff. Sometimes love, too," Jack answers, "it really depends on the context. Does the character love something, or is the character worried?"

"How would I know?" Pitch asks frowning.

Jack stops looking to the apple in his hand to shoot the man a look, "seriously? You read the book to that point, didn't you? It's pretty easy to figure out, if you did."

Pitch is silent at that, and after a minute or two of him not answering, Jack takes it as Pitch dropping the conversation altogether, and continues to eat.

Really, Pitch is just thinking - read the book before that part? What did he do beforehand, to earn such a feeling?

He knocked over the statue of liberty, sure, he also left hundreds of people stranded in the middle of antarctica before the feeling.

He did many, many things before he felt like something was squeezing his lungs.

Finding out would be next to impossible, at this rate!

"Are you talking about yourself?" Jack quietly asks.

"No." Pitch stubbornly answers.

"I think you are."

Pitch stays silent.

 **-o-**

They don't talk again for weeks after this.

Pitch brings Jack little things to eat or entertain himself with, and for some miraculous reason this makes the disgusting feeling go away, if just for a few hours.

Jack doesn't bring it up, and for that Pitch is thankful.

 **-o-**

The boy rocks the cage side-to-side from where he sat, watching Pitch.

Just...watching.

It was like the boy was daydreaming, or in a daze, but everywhere Pitch would move, the boy's eyes would always follow.

"What?" Pitch growls, scowling.

The boy blinks, and finally looks at him, "uh, what?" he asks.

"You were watching me. What do you want?"

Jack arches an eyebrow, "oh. I was just thinking, I guess."

Pitch snorts angrily, turning his back to the child, going back to reading his book. His chair had gotten wrecked a few days ago by a stray nightmare. It had been a fairly wild nightmare, as it had been recently made, and hadn't listened like the others.

That should worry him, but so far the other, newer nightmares didn't act out in such a way, so he just chocked it up to a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Jack had seemed to enjoy it at the time, though, and had laughed about it for what seemed like years, but was only a few minutes.

The child sighs from his cage, "I miss the snow," he says.

"Oh, do you?" Pitch says with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

"I'll see it again, someday," Jack continues, "but I can't help but miss it, sometimes."

Pitch laughs darkly, "you'll _never_ see it again."

His chest tightens when he glances back to see the child curled into himself, but he doesnt stop smiling, the shadows and him laughing at a humorless joke only they could laugh at.

And, finally, for what seemed - and was - the first time in forever, he felt the tiniest pinch of fear from the boy.

So small, that had he been anywhere farther, he wouldn't be able to feel it.

But it was there.

 _Jack_ was afraid.

 **-o-**

 **o**

 **-o-**

And Pitch found he hated knowing this.

He didn't want Jack to be afraid.


End file.
